a lot of people aren't ready to admit this but a huge reason why pokemon became as popular as it did was because the first couple gens were unashamedly japanese. they wer clearly set in japan with obviously japanese characters and a lot of culturally japnaese ideas that even the most through nintendo localizer can't really scrub out

this is why a lot of people responded so well to pokemon legends. a pokemon game blatantly set in japan with all kinds of weird gen 1 lore like pokemon shrinking themselves to fit into balls that also makes a big shift on the gameplay formula = wow cool japan pokemon is back, I'm invested. by pandering to their non-japanese fanbase pokemon has ironically pushed away a lot of what made it appealing to those people in the first place